Steam fife

musical-kettle

This auto-flute does it with steam. Well, electricity gets its piece of the action too as the tone holes are opened and closed using a set of solenoids. We're at a loss on how the sound is actually produced. We would think that a penny whistle has been used here, except if that were the case the solenoid nearest the kettle would have no use. Then again, after watching the demo after the break … [Read more...]

Displaying bubbles in mineral oil

bubble

After he saw a 'falling water display,' [Matt] figured he could turn that idea on its head. He built a display that uses bubbles for pixels. Even though the build isn't complete, we love the results so far. [Matt] began his build constructing a tall, thin water tank out of acrylic. Eight solenoids were mounted in the base of the tank, attached to an aquarium air supply, plastic tubing, and one … [Read more...]

Weapon of mass graffiti

weapon-of-mass-graffiti

What uses a fire extinguisher, a bike pump, and provides hours of probation, community service, and possibly jail time? If you said an automatic graffiti writer you're correct! [Olivier van Herpt] calls this little job the Time Writer. We call it defacing property... but tomato, tomahto. Details are a bit scarce, but you get a fine overview of the system from the video after the break. … [Read more...]

Thumper The T-Shirt Launcher

[joe] and [ryan] built Thumper for their high school FIRST robotics team. The cannon itself is a solenoid-fired compressed air launcher that gets its juice from three large PVC tanks stored in the box below the turret, and the cannon is able to be fired nine times between visits to the air compressor. It was intentionally designed to resemble an M2 Browning 50 Caliber heavy machine gun, with the … [Read more...]

Washing machine mechanical timer replaced with microcontroller

panel

After the electromechanical timer on [Paul Canello's] washing machine broke for the third time he decided he needed to stop repairing it and find a more permanent fix. He decided to build his own microcontroller-based system for washing his clothes (translated). Caution: The image links on [Paul's] page seem to be broken and will unleash a never-ending storm of empty pop-up windows if you click … [Read more...]

Valentine’s Day love song machine

tellart_bell_ensemble

Just in time for Valentine's day, [Adam Meyer] and the folks over at tellart.com have put together a little project they call the "Love Song Machine". Using a web-based form, anyone can submit a song, which will then be played on a system of bells that they have set up in their office. You can choose from several pre-defined love songs, or you can create your own unique arrangement with which to … [Read more...]

Magnetic digital scale

magnetic-scale

Above you see a solenoid being used as a digital scale. The magnetic field from the coil in the base levitates the platform above, where a load to be measured is place. This floating platform has a permanent magnet in it, hovering above a hall effect sensor in the base. As the distance between that magnet and the sensor changes, the measurable magnetic field changes as well. The hall effect sensor … [Read more...]